The floor of the room they were in was covered in a shallow layer of dust, small bits of rock rubble, and other small trash. Now, as the party looked around at it, they could see this loose stuff moving in several places; agitated, as if by wind or stirred with a stick. As they watched, the centre of each disturbance sprouted a shining dome, about a foot across. This rose, slowly at first, then quicker.
By the time the eight metal skulls were chin-high out of the floor, the band was already running towards the stairwell. By unspoken agreement, and also by the fiat of his lighter load, the sorcerer Kobort was first up the stairs, closely followed by Hildraft, the slowest mover.
By this time, eight 8' tall steel skeletons were out of the floor and bearing down on Sack and Surya, who turned to face them and hefted their weapons.
Attacking with vigour, the pair managed to make two slight dents in the constructs, while themselves suffering painful wounds. Deciding that head-on combat was not going to be the answer, they followed the others and retreated up the stairs. They were somewhat surprised when they were not followed.
Shedding his armour, Sack tiptoed back down the stairs with infinite caution, hefting two brass ingots from the room above. On arriving back in the anteroom, he discovered the skeletons had disapeared without trace. Puzzled, he peered around for a while, then tried an experiment. He lobbed one of his ingots gently towards where the nearest sksleton had appeared from. Nothing happened. Then he hurled the other one with deadly accuracy at the door at the far end. With an echoing clang, the ingot struck the door - and the skulls started to rise again. He fled back up the stairs, and they subsided.
While this was going on, Hildraft and Surya had returned to the ancient forge on the upper level. Kindling a fire in the furnaces, the dwarf unpacked his tools and the pair of them set to work. While edged blades appeared to be of limited effect against these monsters, concussion weapons seemed a better bet; certainly Hildraft's priestly training and Surya's field experience indicated that skeleton undead were more vulnerable to impact weapons. So the pair set to, and between them managed to produce three masterwork warhammers.
Sack descended again, and tiptoed across to the doors. Settling down, he proceeded to study the structure of the locks in more detail, without touching them or attempting to disarm the trap. Searching the room in more detail, he found the remains of a human skeleton in one corner, so crushed that he'd missed it at first, and near it a set of four keys. He tried these, but none helped.
Some time later, Surya joined him and added what he knew about locks. Finally, the two of them managed to work out how the mechanism operated, and the trap was disarmed. The door swung free. Declining to proceed further, the party retreated upstairs and rested overnight, bandaging and salving the wounds they'd received so far.
Next morning, after a breakfast of trail rations, they descended to the skeleton room again and opened the door. A veritable Aladdin's Cave of treasures met their gaze. This was the storage vault of the smithworks of Elverandil; though most of the best weapons must have been withdrawn for use in the (futile) defence of the city, there were still a great many wonderous items here. At the far end of the vault bulked a heavy safe, easily big enough to accommodate one or more swords, covered with dust and muck. In the centre was blazoned Elverandil’s badge; arranged in a star pattern around the centre were five locks. All detected as magical, and all appeared to be trapped.
First of all, the band removed all the treasure from the vault, and wedged the doors open with more ingots from the stores above.
Sack and Kobort settled in to try and crack the safe. The first lock appeared to be co-operating, but suddenly there was a "click" where neither of them were expecting one. Highly-strung as they were after recent events, both managed to dive for cover as a massive blast of flame erupted from the safe, setting fire to the shelving in the room and sweeping poor Nosebiter off Kobort's shoulder close to death. Surprisingly, Surya took charge of the owl, and cared for its' wounds while Sack and Kobort addressed the rest of the locks.
After much more work, and a nasty incident with a poisoned needle trap (which forced Sack to utilise one of his three Heal potions), the safe was finally opened. Inside they found... paper.
The sword Mergil was gone - if indeed it had ever been here.
Hunting through the papers, the party found two interesting documents; the last page from Elverandil's personal diary, and a letter from a Dwarven mastersmith, Durggedin the Black. Also there were the priceless technique-books of the Mastersmith himself, centuries of forgelore, that both Surya and Hildraft knew could add immeasurably to their own skills with weaponcrafting.